AGRICULTURE

The agricultural sector was divided between those who produced primarily for their own consumption, that is, the subsistence sector, and those who produced for sale. Commercial agriculture increased in importance during the Porfiriato as the railroad opened the way to distant markets and exports. The subsistence sector was closely associated with the small farmer, while commercial agriculture was closely associated with the roughly 7,000 hacendados in Mexico. Some 45,000 to

50,000 rancheros, who worked, but did not necessarily own, properties in the 100 to 1,000 hectare range (247 to 2,470 acres), formed a middle stratum.87

A variety of factors led to the increased concentration of land ownership during the Porfiriato. The railroad increased marketing opportunities and provided incentive to displace peasants. Lands that in the past had been set aside to attract colonists to fight Indians were no longer needed for that purpose. Diaz’s advisors believed that large landowners, particularly those who engaged in commercial agriculture, were more efficient and productive custodians of land than Indian villagers and peasants. They reasoned that for nature to be transformed and for the economy to be developed, both the land and the labor of the peasant had to be placed on the market.88

The actual mechanism for transfer of property to large landowners varied. Sometimes property was simply purchased. In other cases, individual landowners illegally appropriated land. The government intervened to remove the Yaqui and open the way for commercial agriculture in Sonora. Sociologist Andres Molina Enriquez noted that some hacendados simply litigated spurious claims until the legitimate, but financially strapped, owner was overwhelmed.89

Through the 1870s, informal land titles, or the lack of land titles, kept much land off the market. A Mexican geologist hired by oil companies commented on the informal arrangements by which land was held in many places:

The boundaries were not well defined [and] no one bothered to measure or to fence his property; the transfer of ownership was done from fathers to sons, almost by tradition and [transfers] done by sales or exchanges followed a vague and at times uncertain specification of the boundaries. In other cases, the actual extension of land was hid in order to escape the tax collector and finally, as the majority of the land remained uncultivated and covered by virgin jungle, the proprietors did not actually know the size of their [properties].90

Laws passed in 1883 and 1894 allowed privately owned surveying companies (companlas deslindadoras) to identify unclaimed lands, survey them at their own expense, and then turn two-thirds of the land surveyed over to the national government. To compensate the surveying companies for their efforts, the remaining third would become company property, which was usually sold. The government felt that the surveying process would: 1) promote growth by attracting capital once titles were regularized, 2) raise money for the government, which could auction the two-thirds of surveyed land it received title to and later collect taxes on all the land surveyed, 3) attract European immigrants who could be lured by secure land titles, and 4) attract Mexicans to border areas by offering land with clear titles.91

During the Porfiriato, the surveying companies received 52 million acres of land in compensation, that is, 10.7 percent of Mexico’s territory. This implies that 157 million acres, 32 percent of Mexico’s territory, were surveyed under the program.92

The transfer of this surveyed land to private individuals represented a tremendous concentration of wealth, and, as was desired, served to create a modern capitalist economy. Without secure titles, no one would invest in natural resources or agriculture. This land surveying had the unintended effect of increasing deforestation. Previously, forests had been considered as a common village resource complementing informally held agricultural properties. After these informally held properties were surveyed and transferred to others, those who had cultivated them would increase their timber cutting to support themselves. In 1905, a journalist commented, “The forests are being destroyed by peons who would rather gather roots in the mountains than work on the haciendas.”93

Communities that claimed to have had their property rights infringed by the surveying companies could appear before a judge and claim ownership to land the survey companies deemed vacant or untitled (baldio). In some cases, large-scale commercial farmers in alliance with local elites used the surveying process to seize the land of small farmers. However, court records indicate that most community protests were upheld. The government, in upholding these claims, was responding to conflicting interests. It wanted land surveyed and placed on the market, yet it wanted to maintain rural peace, something that it felt would be impossible if large numbers of rural people felt dispossessed. The government knew that rural peace was essential to attracting foreign investors. Both the government and the surveying companies were willing to yield to peasant claims due to the abundance of land surveyed. If a few thousand acres were declared the property of villagers in one locality, tens of thousands in another locale were in fact unclaimed and uncultivated.94

As an institution, the hacienda rebounded from its post-independence slump due to: 1) political stability, 2) the markets offered by mines and cities, 3) railroads to move crops and cattle, 4) access to bank credit, and 5) access to land provided by reform laws and surveying companies. Some estates contained large expanses of unproductive land, maintained close ties to nearby villages, and retained a deeply feudal quality. These entities consumed their own products and were more aristocratic luxuries than business ventures. Other haciendas were managed as modern commercially oriented enterprises. Haciendas often lost their feudal qualities when new interests purchased them and introduced more commercially minded management.95

Critics of the hacienda often claimed unused land indicated a lack of entrepreneurial spirit. However, in many cases, such land reflected a lack of capital or the inability to market crops. In such cases, hacendados would allow renting and sharecropping, since that did not require capital and shifted the risk of crop failure away from the hacendado in case of drought or other natural calamity. Hacendados sometimes held excess land to deny local peasants the opportunity to grow their own crops, thus forcing them to work on the hacienda. Idle land was also held as a reserve, should market opportunities improve. Recent scholarship has done much to dispel the notion of hacendados as not being commercially oriented. Generally hacendados, or their administrators, quickly adjusted to new markets offered by the railroad and brought in machinery on the same railroad tracks that carried away their crops.96

Hacienda agriculture differed from U. S. agriculture, which faced a labor shortage. In the United States, farmers made massive investment in laborsaving technology. This resulted in the United States becoming a world leader in the design and production of farm machinery and provided a stimulus to the U. S. capital goods industry. In Mexico, the solution to agricultural labor shortages in areas such as Valle Nacional was not to introduce better technology but to coerce labor.97

During the first decade of the twentieth century, agricultural exports totaled more than a third of export value, which was amazing considering the resurgence of mining. This agricultural boom was closely associated with the railroad. Before the building of the railroad, hacendados lobbied to have a rail line built near their land and subsequently they lobbied the government to mandate lower freight rates for their produce.98

At the beginning of the Porfiriato, Mexico was still relying on such agricultural exports as vanilla and tobacco. This changed as the railroad opened new marketing opportunities. Between 1891—1892 and 1901—1902, cattle exports increased by 493 percent, rubber by 95 percent, and beans by 127 percent. Growers in Mexico’s Pacific Northwest appropriated Indian lands and constructed irrigation works, allowing them to use the railroad to supply U. S. markets with sugar and fresh vegetables. Investment in farming former Yaqui land led Sonora to have the second highest rate of U. S. capital investment in Mexico (after Veracruz with its oil).99

Unlike mining and manufacturing, technological change did not revolutionize agricultural production. It did, however, influence the demand for Mexico’s agricultural exports. The discovery of aniline dyes in 1856 eliminated the demand for cochineal dye. As a result of the development of the mechanical reaper/binder in the United States, Yucatan began exporting henequen, a fiber obtained from a cactus-like plant. Binders used twine made from twisted henequen fibers. Between 1900 and 1910, as a result of cheap labor and a booming international market, profits on henequen investments ranged between 50 and 600 percent. U. S. and Canadian binders consumed an average of 235,000 tons of twine a year between 1900 and 1930.100

International Harvester, which dominated 99.8 percent of the henequen market in 1910, sought to maintain low henequen prices so farmers would buy their harvesters. Despite this, and their suffering through boom and bust production cycles, a small number of henequen producers became fabulously rich. Historian Allen Wells commented on their life style:

Looking to the far-off capitals of the Western world for inspiration and design, the prosperous henequeneros built ornate palaces with marble pillars, intricately carved fafades, and ostentatious stained-glass enclosed porticos. . . In addition to engaging in pleasant after-dinner conservation while sipping imported French wines on his shaded veranda, the henequen oligarch also spent considerable time keeping abreast of current stock quotations from the Paris bourse and dabbling in urban and rural real estate.101

As with most agricultural commodities, henequen came at a steep price. Growers used state power to break down communal village land ownership and coerce the Maya to produce the fiber, which permitted the use of labor-saving machines in Canada and the U. S. midwest. To limit their mobility, henequen workers were encouraged to take on debt. England’s Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society reported that henequen workers toiled “in a bondage at once as cruel and hopeless as almost any form of slavery within knowledge of the society.”102

Henequen cultivation shifted 9,000 square miles from more biologically diverse cattle and cornraising to mono-crop plantations. The steam-powered machines used to extract the fiber from the henequen leaf were fueled by wood, which in turn led to deforestation and erosion on additional land. In 1903, to address this deforestation, the State of Yucatan created a forestry commission. However, henequen producers neither understood its mission nor cooperated with it.103

U. S. investment in land came late in the Porfiriato. Between 1902 and 1912, such investment increased from $30 million to $80 million. In 1910, Americans held about 130 million acres, or 27 percent of Mexico’s surface area. Fewer than a hundred American interests held nearly 90 million of these acres in tracts larger than 100,000 acres.104

Through 1910, American ownership of Mexican property rarely resulted in conflict. In some cases, though, authorities refused to remove squatters and defaulted renters from American-owned properties. In other cases, those occupying lands to which Americans had acquired legal title were forced off. For example, in 1908, the federal cavalry received orders to clear settlers from land that the Hearst family had purchased at auction. In addition to the large holders, some 15,000 American “pioneers,” brandishing rifles and titles to small farms, displaced thousands of Mexican peasants and rancheros.105

In 1910, Mexico had 3,581,000 people in its agricultural labor force, or 63.7 percent of workers. However, due to their low productivity, they only produced 24.0 percent of GDP, an average of only $230 per capita (in 1970 U. S. dollars). The almost universal illiteracy of agricultural workers made increasing their productivity difficult.106

While agricultural exports boomed, production for domestic use was neglected. Between 1877 and 1907, per capita corn production declined from 282 kilograms to 144. Imports from the United States made up part of this shortfall. However, few mechanisms existed to match grain supplies with the increased number of people thrust into the grain market. A 1901 corn famine in Michoacan illustrated this. Speculators raised the price of corn beyond the means of many, leading residents of Puruandias to storm a grain warehouse. The hungry were driven off by armed guards, leaving twenty wounded, including seven women and four children.107

Porfirio Diaz’s understanding of rural Mexico served to maintain peace through the first decade of the twentieth century. To limit rural unrest, he instructed government officials to ensure that village land rights be respected. In 1901, a constitutional amendment allowed villages, but not the Church, to hold communal property. Ending the prohibition on village land ownership eliminated a major source of rural discontent.108